Solitary Ballerina
by icebreather
Summary: River has made a mistake, and regrets what it costs Jayne. Rayne, written in response to a challenge by Original Bubble.


Disclaimer: Firefly: The Series and Serenity: The Firefly Movie and all related characters are copyright 2002-2005 Mutant Enemy, Inc., Universal Pictures, and 20th Century Fox. This is a work of fanfiction. No copyright infringement is intended

A/N: This is a response to a challenge by Original Bubble, to write a River-centric fic based on a song called 'So She Dances' that's sung by J. Groban. It was written quite quickly (for me) and is un-beta'd. Let me know what you think!

X

X

X

X

X

There will never be a crowd. She acknowledges that to herself as she enters the cargo bay in her slippers. When she was younger she dreamed of a crowd, an audience to her artistry, but she understands that is impossible now. Standing in dimmed lighting that, if she imagines hard enough, faintly resembles moonlight, she pulls her hair back from her face and into a ponytail. She does this because along with her re-connection to the 'verse has come a cognizance of little things, ordinary things, irritating things like your long hair getting in your way when you're trying to dance.

There's a new comprehension tonight, too, of not-so-little things like your unbound hair obscuring your peripheral vision so that, focused on the thoughts and intentions of the seven large skilled men you're fighting, you at first miss the darting movement of a boy 750 meters away. And so there isn't time to get there before the dark-haired kid somehow slips in under Jayne's guard, and with his knife does some real damage before dying, Jayne killing to avoid being killed.

This memory is a difficult one, for despite the many ways that she knows she fails, combat is one arena in which she has become the unparalleled champion. She fights as no other human in the known 'verse can. She had thought it her one dependable skill. She does not think this anymore.

She turns the nearby speaker's volume to the desired level, but does not yet play the music she's hacked from the Cortex. Stretching down to lay her palms flat on the decking, legs straight and long, she regrets that miss of hers for another reason, one that has surprised her every morning that she's awakened since. The regret is for the discomfort that she's felt Jayne feeling. Ever since a different boy on Canton who took a killing knife in Jayne's stead, she has found the mercenary to be softened and confused by surprising things. This death of a boy is one of those things.

Standing upright, balanced firmly on her left foot, she lifts the right into the air above her head, one hand reaching up toward it and the other providing balance on her opposite side. Equilibrium, poise, she has gained it on the outside and now strives to make a mirror image on the inside. But this is disturbed by the sudden presence at the other end of the cargo bay.

Outlined against the brighter light of the corridor, he's a hulking darkness in the dimness. She's left the lights mostly down. Her mood is not bright tonight. She frowns fiercely in his direction; Jayne is not supposed to be walking this far from the infirmary yet, he has been too near the edge of death. But he is stubborn. Determining to ignore him, she lowers one leg and raises the other, stretching far. But today her soul cannot follow. Not yet.

For that, there is the music.

Back to the speaker she goes, feet silent, dress swishing, to turn on the Cortex remote that Kaylee helped her rig for this purpose. She scrolls past the earthy comforting songs, the air-filled bubbly ones, the wet and wild cries, the fiery conflagrations. Those are not for tonight. Tonight she is a solitary ballerina on a music box's lid, and so she settles on something that tinkles and crescendos. It's quiet but arresting, moody but optimistic, a boy's song about a dancing girl; she directs it to repeat before she starts it.

Jayne is still over in the shadows, but he's come closer. She wishes he would go away; he's too much of the weight that has unbalanced her this day, and this week. He is the reason she flung the words "crooked liners and the drawers are empty" at Kaylee when the smiling engineer met her outside her hatch yesterday morning. He is the reason Simon wore Big-Brother-Worry alternating with Professional-Doctor-Concern on his face all day today.

The music has started and she's been too captured by her thoughts to notice. She jumps, startled, and hurries to catch up. She wants Jayne gone and yet he's there, his posture intent, watching her with eyes that she can't see. He's still inching closer, as though pulled; as though the song and the dance call silently to him. The music usually washes over her; she ordinarily finds herself reflected back at herself, and in the duality she finds wholeness. So she turns her body to working out her confusion, but today it is not working. There is herself, and there is Jayne, separate entities, and between them is a crowd, after all; a confused mangled mass of shadows, memories, and feelings. The first verse moves into the chorus, and Jayne moves, too, slowly, heavily favoring his left side. She can't see his face but he's there, flashing past as she turns, rotating upside down as she bends over backward. And his thoughts are there, too, as they were five days ago.

They surprise her still, those thoughts. _My fault._ Just before he'd lost consciousness, she'd caught that as she ran toward him, nearly there but not near enough. Jayne doesn't shoulder the blame for anything, that's not who he is. But about this he did, and is (though only to himself, of course). The reason why is even more surprising: _wouldn't have had to kill that stupid kid if I hadn't been depending on Moonbrain so much. Expecting her to have my back ... used ta know better. Ain't no one ever ... ain't adjustin' well._ When he briefly regained consciousness on the way to the infirmary, those mental words battered at her. And she knew then and knows now that it is true: they've become cogs in each other's machinery, she and Jayne. And that day she did not perform her function. She failed, and so Jayne was forced into something painful to his seldom-used conscience. That's a type of discomfort with which he is ill-equipped to deal.

_Balance_, she tries to remind herself. But her own thoughts are consuming her, and now Jayne moves again, so that the shadows slip back from his powerful shoulders, his dark head, and finally his watchful eyes. And she falters, which in all her years of dancing is certainly a first. She stumbles amidst the throng of recollection and emotion, because of the new thought she catches from his mind. It is not about the fight or her miss or the boy's death. It is about the night following, in the infirmary, after Simon gravely announced to the rest of the crew that Jayne wasn't going to die from the knife that made half-a-dozen shallow wounds before sliding into his fifth intercostal space and piercing his heart.

She'd been in the room, and stayed as the others filtered out. Jayne stayed too, unconscious on the cart, Simon's tools of life collected quietly nearby for sterilization. And River stood beside the cart, staring down at Jayne's large, still form, oddly sideswiped by how glad she felt that the stillness wasn't entire. His chest moved. And within it, the heart to which she'd never given any thought till now, it beat. Each beat made a tent in the bright line on the vitals monitor, and a soft 'blip' sound as well. Fascinated, wanting to experience that thump a little more personally, and without thought to the fact that people didn't _touch_ Jayne, not for touching's sake, she did. She laid her hand lightly on top of the many padded layers of dressing, over the analgesic-numbed tissue that Simon had opened in order to save the heart beneath.

She hadn't felt Jayne's heart beating. And through the analgesia and the anesthesia and the dressing, he shouldn't have felt her hand. But he did. His eyes flicked open, catching her in the act. He stared up into her face, and then down at her hand. He was muzzy from medication and there were no thoughts in his head beyond '_what ...'_ and she doesn't know how long she stood there before taking her hand away and leaving.

And now. Now, in Jayne's head, in his eyes as he stares at her, is that memory. Her touching him. Her hand on his chest. It's of this that he thinks, and the thought is tinged with his current view of her; her body dancing, her shadow a graceful companion. It's shaded with his ever-present lust, yes, but also with an aura of what she never expected to associate with Jayne – romance. As much of it as his scarred and simple soul is capable.

The song has ended and begun again. The music has seeped into her psyche now. Lover-like, it has lifted her, and has carried her across the distance Jayne hasn't crossed. He tips his head down in order to keep watching her and he doesn't back away. Both her feet are flat on the floor as her heart catches, pauses, and she stares into his eyes and sees light, constellations of stars. The song's chorus crescendos and she doesn't notice that her eyes have teared until the stars in his eyes fracture and prism. They sing; there's music and it's all right that her heart isn't beating, because his is. His beats, and the rhythm is her and her dance. He doesn't move. She does; her hand to his chest, again, where this time there is less padding and so she can feel the _thump-thump_ beneath her palm.

Her feet are moving for a long time before she realizes it, but she is no longer the lone ballerina. She looks down at them and sees the pattern; a waltz. A dance for partners. She raises her head again and looks at him, continuing to step, working the pattern around him. He stands still; he's too injured, yet, for dancing. For now, he just watches.

But he won't be watching forever. One day her dance will be a celebration of the balance she's found. It will be a dance for two.


End file.
